Semiconductor E-fuses in general are known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,880, Low Voltage Programmable Storage Element, issued Aug. 2, 1994, by Abadeer et al., which is incorporated herein in its entirety.
However, known semiconductor E-fuses have not proven to be entirely satisfactory. Programming in silicon-based semiconductor devices (e.g., fuses) can result in post collateral damage of the neighboring structures. This result typically forces a fuse pitch, or fuse cavity, set of rules that do not scale well with the technology feature rules from one generation to the next. Thus, fuse density and effectiveness of fuse repair, replacement, or customization are limited. Typically, such damage is caused by particulates from fuse blow. In addition, standard electrical programming of a conductive fuse is to change its resistance, either from an unprogrammed state having a low resistance to a programmed state having a high resistance, or from an unprogrammed state having a high resistance to a programmed state having a low resistance. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,880. Such fuses contain an initial resistance, R0±ΔR0, and a programmed resistance, Rp±ΔRp. It is the ±ΔRp that causes fuse read instability because this parameter is statistical in nature. The variations that cause the R0 and Rp distributions to approach each other cause practical limitations in interrogating a programmed fuse through a standard CMOS latching circuit. To overcome these limitations, the prior art has included additional fuses as reference elements in order to discriminate between a programmed and unprogrammed fuse. Such practices result in unwanted growth in the fuse bank area.